SpiderOak Online Storage service is secure, speedy & simple to use

By , Published July 8, 2010

Linux users are already spoilt for choice when it comes to free online cloud storage. Ubuntu itself comes with 2GB of free space for all users via the UbuntuOne service. We've already looked at the Wuala service last week but now we turn our attention to SpiderOak – a lesser known rival which caught our attention for all the right reasons€¦

At first glance it's easy to see SpiderOak as 'yet another' online backup and storage service tool. Whilst this is true to a point, SpiderOak brings enough unique features to the table to make it a worthy contender in the fight for your files.Selection_003
We all know that backup is important. It's one of those mantras drummed into us along with 'look both ways before you cross the road' and 'No, really, that super hot chilli you think you can handle – you can't. '

We're rather blessed in this age of fast internet. Truly. I remember having a messenger bag full of floppies in high-school on which my most important documents, cherished images and the odd really bad quality .wma sound effect had to squeeze into lest something catastrophic happen on my miniscule HDD of the day. 

Surprisingly 1.44MB often went a long way back then but because of the capacious amount of storage we enjoy today many of us negate the need to back-up.

Online back-up tools have really come to fore in the last few years largely because they take the hassle out of baking up. No manual copy and pasting files to a separate hard-drive – just open your online backup tool, select the folders and files you need protecting and it's all done automatically.

So what does SpiderOak bring to the table?

SpiderOak: Features

Encryption

€œPrivacy€ is one of this century's buzzwords and with good reason. No-one wants their files, folders and data accessible by anyone and as such both Privacy and Security are at the heart of SpiderOak. Encryption is applied on all your file uploads and only you own the decryption key. This is both a boon and a bad for if you lose the key you lose access to your data too!

So secure is this that SpiderOak claim not even their tech staff can read a user’s stored data thanks to the use of dual encryption layers.

Space Saving

SpiderOak uses compression and de-duping technology on your uploads that enables you to store more data in your account than you might first think!

The de-duping process is, as the name implies, a way to prevent same file duplication. If you upload two of the same file SpiderOak will only save the parts of the second file that are different to the first resulting in space saving. how much space could you save? According to the awesome SpiderOak representative I spoke to: €œA lot of our users report space savings of 60%+ and in some cases (document intense backups etc) up to 90%.€ . Nifty!

Long-term retention of previous files versions

If you want to revert to an older copy of a file you've been working on then SpiderOak supports this. Again using the space saving de-duplication feature only the parts of a file that have changed take up space.

What else does SpiderOak offer?

  • Share folders with others (includes RSS feed)
  • Access to your files via the Web
  • Backup multiple PCs with configurable multi-platform synchronization
  • Keeps folder structures (incl. sub folders) intact

The interface

The usability of an application is vitally important and whilst SpiderOak's desktop application is obviously not a GTK application it's thoughtfully put together with an emphasis on helping you backup.

SpiderOak's file synchronization across platforms works quite similar to how both Dropbox and Ubuntu One work: edit an application on one system and it results in a change on the other. As with Ubuntu One you can select any number of folders to sync, including hidden ones using the 'advanced' selection button.

2GB of free space

In keeping with competing services SpiderOak gives users 2GB for free  – though this can be increased up to 6GB through friend-referrals.

SpiderOak is also much cheaper than the competition with 100GB costing just $10/m or $100 yearly. In comparison 100GB with Dropbox costs $20/m and $10/m on UbuntuOne only gets you half the space.

Download

SpiderOak is available to download as a .deb file @ spideroak.com

Win one of two 100GB premium accounts

We have two 1-year long 100GB premium accounts to give away, courtesy of SpiderOak. To win one you need to send us a photo, or image, showing us why you're so very much in need of 100GB of online space. The two most deserving (or creative) cases will bag themselves 100GB of free online storage with SpiderOak and access to a bevy of ace premium features.

Send your entries  to ireallyneedmorespace@omgubuntu.co.uk or @omgubuntu on Twitter.

Closing date is 10th July – so get cracking!

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Wuala – Linux friendly secure DropBox alternative
  2. Ubuntu One Beta – Free 2GB Online Storage From Ubuntu!
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  • Anonymous

    spideroak’s friend request never gave me the extra space it said it would give me :S

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      I am sorry, sometimes (rarely) the referral process can fail due to a combination of cookie-block, browser change and ip-address change. Just send me an email at daniel@spideroak.com and I will see to it that you and your referrer are both credited the space + a little extra for your troubles.

      Daniel, SpiderOak Inc

      • Anonymous

        @Daniel : WOW that reply was pretty quick !

      • Anonymous

        thanks, and i appreciate your answer , but i no longer need spideroak,
        dropbox is good enough for my needs right now

  • Stephan

    # Share folders with others (includes RSS feed)
    # Access to your files via the Web

    How is that possible if your Files are encrypted?

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      As long as your files are stored in our cloud (backed up) they are 100% encrypted and zero-knowledge protected. However, WHEN you share a file or folder online (still SSL protected) the selected files and/or folders are unencrypted for the time you share them (Technically a copy is unencrypted and placed in a specific share location).

      We do however inform our users of this. Relevant question and I hope the answer is satisfactory.

  • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

    I heard at Phoronix forums that openSUSE is planning on implementing some sort of OS integration with SpiderOak (akin to UbuntuOne) =)

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      That is 100% correct, we are actually very happy to be included as a non-OSS add-on for openSUSE 11.3 that is set to be released Juli 15th.

      You can find more information on the 11.3 release of openSUSE and our involvement @ http://wiki.opensuse.org/Portal:11.3

  • Anonymous

    I might be worth thinking about if hadn’t chosen to use DropBox a couple years ago… I’m up to 3Gb with referrals, Windows is setup, my ubuntu box is setup PCLinuxOS box too. SpiderOak might be good but it’s too late… DropBox is all I need, sorry…

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      Dropbox is an excellent application and the founders and the company is really first class. We are competitors but at the same time our niche is more demanding users (mainly from a functionality and security standpoint) while dropbox tends to aim for the more casual user with a focus on file sharing.

      I do hope you are happy with dropbox and if you ever feel the need for more space we do play nice with each other so there is no harm in using both Dropbox and SpiderOak.

  • Suicideking

    I’ll stick with Dropbox.

    10Gb free, light weight, supports sym-links, and works flawlessly ALL-THE-TIME (yeah, I’m looking at you Ubuntu One!).

    • GetBrown

      i’m surprised that all these cloud storage companies aren’t trying to under-cut each other with the initial free storage amount.

      is there any technical reasoning behind offering 2G free?

      • Suicideking

        Why the fuck are you asking me?

        • Dave

          LOL

      • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

        No real reasoning other than much more and it starts getting really expensive, most companies also try to keep the ‘free space’ under 5GB (at least without referral effort) in order to at least somewhat ward off bulk sign-up’s of users that are after sharing DVD-rips etc.

        Other than that I just think its a natural progression from 1GB that was ‘standard’ free space a few years ago and I am sure it will grow as drives and bandwidth become cheaper.

        • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

          Indeed.
          And if you’re a big company like MS, than you can offer 25 GB free easily without losing profit.

  • Postenga

    It’s a very good program…just need more integration with nautilus

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      We are actually working on a brand new OS integration for Win/Mac and Linux that will be out ‘soon’ which will add several integration features.

      • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

        Planning on any KDE integration?

        • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

          We will likely concentrate on KDE/Gnome for the foreseeable future but nothing is impossible. We are also moving towards publishing all our code as open source which would allow users total freedom.

          • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

            Cool =D

          • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/7GXJ4CL5A6A5YPPUO47UQXGP5Y Johan

            That sounds awesome. Security is very important to me and having open source implementations makes me feel safe about using the service. I’ll give it a go when I get home from work today, it sounds great.

  • Anonymous

    Looking at these comments I can’t but be impressed by the customer service, very responsive indeed!
    100 GB sounds nice…however, is there any business soloution where an account (or storage amount) could be cut up into smaller sub accounts that allows for central management.
    You see, my father is quite outgrowing his Box.net account (and in turn its outgrowing his budget since he’s adding more employees) and he needs a capable, reliable, and affordable alternative which would allow for fine tuning of projects and such.
    The encryption and space saving is especially nice.
    Best of luck to spideroak

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      Well for now what might make sense is that we do not charge a per seat/per install fee at all but you can have ANY number of client installations accessing the same accounts storage (Eg. You can have 100GB shared between your Linux client, Windows machine, Linux Server, Macbook etc) and only pay for one account. This of course works best if all locations are managed by one person since all locations data will be accessible through the same login/password.

      We are however in the process of starting an ‘enterprise project’ that will include user management, groups, admins and a long list of features aimed at small to medium size companies. This is however at least a few months away from release.

      • Anonymous

        Oh, that sounds great.I would like to recommend to go with a per seat model since your product will mainly be used as a portable storage outlet (I would rather configure a vpn and ssh than pay per install). I would also recommend making “sub-accounts” cost less than the account as a whole, while at the same time keeping it flexible .In box.net you have to get a plan, then sub accounts are cheaper, however adding one person over the limit results in having to get a normal account for them or upgrading the whole company to the next “plan”. As you can see, this is not great for small companies who are slowly growing. so in summary:>per seat please>have it be a bit flexible to add new people or add a “flexible plan” enterprise offering>please keep it affordable (in respect to what is being offered of course)

        • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

          I think you might have been reading our development ideas :-) We have always had as our goal to provide our client/functionality as a way of ‘accessing your data’ and not as a ‘money maker’. Our goal is to be able to provide a smart and useful service at an affordable price, charging for storage rather than per seat, installation or ‘premium functionality.

          What we are looking at currently is more in line with just adding more functionality and charging a ‘small’ premium for access to that type of ‘corporate’ account rather than pricing it out of range for small business and advanced home users.

          I can pretty much promise that once our ‘business class’ product comes out the premium for the extra sub-account functionality, group backup, rights management etc will be very low as our initial approach of charging for storage rather than software has not changed. We are also all about flexibility so I think you will be happy with what we are planning to launch.

          Daniel, SpiderOak Inc

          • Anonymous

            Perfect! Can’t Wait!

            Thanks for the Info. =D

      • Chzumbrunnen

        also think of family, please. For example I’d like to all family members saving their fotos or mp3 files on a “shared folder”. As for now – as far as I can see – all services (Dropbox, wuala, SpiderOak and others) would need to have an account for each familylmember or use a “family account” meaning everyone is using the same user name and password.
        What do you thin if one person could invite people and they only use the space of the one that invited them as long as they’re storing files only in the shared folders (and of course they have an aditional 2Gs for their own files)? Or is this already so?

        • Oona

          Just one quick comment: With Wuala you can create a group and invite all group members to participate in the group. Hence, you would not need one family account to share folders.

          Cheers,
          Oona from Wuala

  • Claudio

    just tried and i must admit it’s a great program! it’s very simple and it works very very well. Canonical should take example from Spideroad for his Ubuntu one. I know they are doing their best but this program is miles away from Ubuntu one!Soeey Canonical but it’s true! :-(

    • Claudio

      sorry for my errors! :-)

  • http://twitter.com/kmetamorphosis Bertel King

    Also, if you provide a .edu email address, you can have 100 gb for $5 a month. It’s a great deal, and I used it for a month, but the interface is too large for a netbook, so I returned to Dropbox.

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      Then I bet you will be happy to hear that our next public release coming this month will scale all the way down to 800×600 correctly to fix the issues that were occurring on netbooks (not seeing full menus, etc in low-res)

  • Sashin

    Its not very well integrated atm… I can’t read the writing in the installer. Its grey on grey.

  • http://twitter.com/philly_mac Philip H. MacIver

    I have been using SpiderOak since the beginning of the year, and it is a great program. But then I saw the review on Wuala last week and I am giving that a go also. And it seems to be a very nice program also with better integration with gnome/nautilus and nicer interface for things like file versioning, and a back in time feature that you can look at how a folder looked at a specific point in the past. They also claim to have to have zero knowledge encryption (at least that is the way it sounds). So my questions are

    1) On a high level view, is the way SpiderOak encrypt data any different from Wuala (I am not talking technical implementation, just what they claim is done)

    2) Any plans from SpiderOak to improve the interface of the client, so that I can do things like, mount the storage locally as a mounted disk (as done by wuala), and able to see the past versions of files without downloaded it first (which is kind of annoying if you have many files, and you have to download a lot just to see which is the one that you want to go back to).

    3) Also I find it annoying that for file restoration there is no “Restore to this folder” option, and only a download to a pre-configured destination for ALL files, (Please correct me if I am wrong). will this change?

    While I like both services at the moment, I would rather stay with SpiderOak because the bill me monthly which means I don’t have to make a long term commitment and if ever i decided I wanted to go I could just go (not that I want to go mind you). Whereas Wuala makes you pay for minimum of a year, which for me is a bit underhanded. What if you want to try out all the features for a few months to see weather you like it or it is good for your situation? You can’t do that unless you trade in storage, which because of how much data I have on my machine, I have precious little of.

    • Seventh Reign

      I highly recommend trying out Wuala. If you share space be prepared to wait about a week for your online time to ‘catch up’. I’ve been running it since the post came out here and I’m just now over 50% online time.

      sharing 40GB (20 from 2 PC’s) I’m getting 25GB from Wuala so far

      • http://twitter.com/philly_mac Philip H. MacIver

        Ummm, I don’t want to share space. That is the whole point. I have very little (< 10GB of 100GB) space left on my home partition on my linux machine, so I just want to buy space.

        • Seventh Reign

          Or you can do that too. Tho it would probably be alot cheaper and more economical just to buy a 1 TB HDD for $100.

          • http://twitter.com/philly_mac Philip H. MacIver

            I do not think you understand the situation. I already have a 1 TB back up hard disk, that I use to back up everything on my system encrypted. But, this is not just about back up, it is about having redundant data. Meaning having multiple places that you data is backed up. So if anything were to happen to my laptop and hard disk, like God forbid I have a fire and they are destroyed, I still have the data back up off site. In my opinion a back up strategy were you only have one copy of the back up, especially if the backup is in the same location as the original data, is just asking for trouble.Anyway. I am not here to Argue about this, I have already done all the maths, and looked at the problem from many ways and many angles. I am a power user and a software developer, and there for I need to be safe in the knowledge that my data is safe and available.So please, I only want answers to the questions I originally posted. Thanks for your input, but it was just telling me things that I have known for years.

          • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

            Philip, I think you 100% correct about essentially ‘how to keep backup’. It’s always a great idea to have a backup drive as of course no online backup provider will (at least not for quite some time) be able to get even close to the speed you get when restoring files locally. However, if you are the victim of a burglary, fire or other accident chances are your local archives are lost.

            You might be intrigued to hear that with spideroak you have a ‘local bit storage’ option where you can simultaneously store data to our cloud AND to a local drive so that you can use our client to encrypt and store data on lets say a 1TB drive on your desk at the same time as you send your data to the cloud, allowing for local restore if possible.

            I also answered your other questions in this thread.

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      1. I do not currently know enough about Wuala to make any real blanket statements regarding differences in our services. I can however say that as far as I know SpiderOak is the only backup service that truly preserves zero-knowledge through secure client sign-up where NO password, encrypted or not is ever sent via the internet (only representations of a key algorithm) or stored on our servers. This makes it technically impossible for us or anyone except the owner of the account to ever decrypt and access the data, or even view the file or folder structure.

      2. We are working on more OS specific implementations for Mac and Windows. We are also looking into desktop integrations for firstly KDE/Gnome for linux.

      3. If you still only see the ‘pre-determined’ download folder option you may want to download and update the latest version of spideroak from https://spideroak.com as we have added the option of downloading/restoring to any location and also automatic start with Operating system etc.

      Best,
      Daniel, SpiderOak Inc

      • http://twitter.com/philly_mac Philip H. MacIver

        How do I access those features?
        I have just downloaded and installed but when I click download on a backed up file it just does the same as before.

        I am using version 3.6.9680

      • http://twitter.com/Luzius Luzius Meisser

        Wuala is also zero-knowledge. The Wuala client never sends your password to our servers. So we cannot access your data.There are also other backup services that look like they are doing this if you specify a custom key (e.g. backblaze). However, it is not easy to find out. Some services claim that your data is encrypted and that their employees cannot access it, but what they actually mean is that there is a corporate policy that forbids their employees from accessing customer data, but technically, they still could (e.g. dropbox). As a rule of thumb, if a service offers “password recovery”, then they can read your data.Luzius, Wuala

        • http://twitter.com/philly_mac Philip H. MacIver

          Thanks for the information.
          I have to admit I find the whole experience with Wuala at the moment much nicer.
          Although the only thing stopping me getting a 100GB account is having to pay for the whole year straight away.

          I think a 30 day trial, or monthly billing, for people that want to see how the service works for them over the course of a month would be great.

          At the moment I cannot commit to Wuala for a year without seeing how it works properly.

          Seems like a great service. But for now I will be sticking to SpiderOak.

    • Mike

      Give CrashPlan a try. Yes, you have to pay for the year but it’s $54 which is $4.50 a month. They offer a 30 day trial. I have a 1TB drive which I have backed up to them for a while with zero issues.

  • Seventh Reign

    I’m not sure I would call SpiderOak lesser known. Atleast on here and WebUp8 it seems pretty popular.

    “No manual copy and pasting files to a separate hard-drive” … even with Back-In-Time and MintBackup I still do that. I dont know why ..Force of Habit I guess.

  • Gotham48

    Is it open source? Is it coded using java or mono? Why must i choose it instead of dropbox or ubuntu one?

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      We are working towards being 100% open sourced by the end of the year, we currently publish many libraries but not all our code. SpiderOak is primarily coded in Python.

  • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

    I must say that I’m thoroughly impressed by the customer service and the focus on security and privacy. I really like that.

    However, at this time my needs are filled by Dropbox. From what I understand, SpiderOak focuses more on people that have higher demands. However, if you ever decide to start focusing more on “casual users”, I can tell you what would sway me personally:
    1. Better desktop integration. I can’t stand running an app that sticks out like a sore thumb (which is why I’ve remade the dropbox icons to fit into my desktop)
    2. Simple sharing. I just want to right click a file (in Nautilus, not SpiderOak) and choose to get a public URL to be able to share it online. In fact, that’s probably my #1 use case.
    3. Simple version control. Basically I would like to be able to say “roll this file back to the way it was 3 days ago”, and have it automatically restored to that point.

    • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

      Thank you for the input, all issues we are working on and I think you will be pleasantly surprised in the coming months as we continue to develop our client application and service.

      • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

        Sweet! I’ll be keeping my eye on how things develop, and I’ve already referred some people to you that I know would have great use of what you’re offering!

  • http://www.colinmccarthy.co.uk ColinMcCarthy

    I love SpiderOak they are brilliant. Used them from the start, everything is backup on my Ubuntu box and my Mums Vista box. Sorted for only about $5 a month.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston

    I’m a happy SpiderOak subscriber and have been for quite a few years now when Dropbox wouldn’t sync for some reason and I needed my photo’s backed up and couldn’t wait for Dropbox to be sorted. I remember SpiderOak from where I work as we are resellers so I signed up for a free 2GB and it just, well it just works =D

  • Bill

    Free Online Backup: is there anything you don’t have the answer to? =P

    (yes im jk. it’s nice to see you take the time & explain/answer questions about your service. it’s a big plus in my book. will definitely be trying you guys out)

  • http://twitter.com/nicolargo Nicolas Hennion

    Here is a presentation screencast of this great onlibne service:

    http://blog.nicolargo.com/2010/05/spideroak-un-serieux-concurrent-a-dropbox.html

  • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

    I just wanted to go ahead and thank everyone that has commented so far, and following commentators for your very intelligent, creative and helpful comments. We at spideroak try to read all comments and any requests, praise or criticism helps us develop a better service.

    Also, if there are any bloggers, journalists or writers that wish to know more, publish their own review or hold a reader contest you are more than welcome to email me directly at daniel@spideroak.com and I will see to it that you get any help you need (this applies of course to Windows, Mac and other Linux versions of our software as well as iPhone app and coming Android and Blackberry apps).

    Thank you all for your input!

    Daniel Larsson, SpiderOak Inc

  • http://twitter.com/Spideroak_Inc Free Online Backup

    With the overwhelming attention and positive feedback from the readers here I went ahead and created a discount for all you wonderful Ubuntu users so if you feel the urge to upgrade to a premium storage account with SpiderOak you can now use code; ‘omgubuntu’ when upgrading/signing-up and you will receive 25% off FOR LIFE on any premium storage amount. 100GB dropping to $7.50/month or $75/year.

    Daniel Larsson, SpiderOak Inc

  • Hugmyballs

    SpiderOak is my preferred cloud backup solution. I don’t use it for syncing though so I can’t comment on that, but backing up is superb.

  • http://twitter.com/dreamtick DreamTick Interactiv

    I think http://www.stocklii.com/en is a good service to consider. It offers 100GB to 10 000GB, unlimited transfert and unlimited users.